'Incredibly unjust': Calls for legislation to allow cancer patients to defer maternity leave

Cancer survivor Erica Tierney wants to see the legislation changed for the women who will go through the same experience in the coming years. Picture: Maxwells

The Government must amend legislation which has been described as unfair and affects up to 60 women every year who are being treated for cancer after giving birth.

The Irish Cancer Society is launching the Leave Our Leave campaign to force the Government to change the Maternity Protection Act 2004.

Currently, women cannot defer their maternity leave while they are being treated and recovering from cancer.

Irish Cancer Society CEO Averil Power said that mothers and their babies are being deprived the special bonding time that maternity leave offers.

"Right now, there is no mechanism for them to defer the maternity leave until they are better," said Ms Power.

"Even though men can actually do that with paternity leave, and that is why the Irish Cancer Society is calling on the Government to change that. It is incredibly unjust."

Ms Power said that the process of changing the legislation would be easily done as the precedent is already there from the Paternity Leave and Benefit Act 2016.

Not including the ability to defer maternity leave "was probably an oversight".

Cancer survivor Erica Tierney from Kildare received a breast cancer diagnosis while 30 weeks pregnant.

The 36-year-old wants to see the legislation changed for the women who will go through the same experience in the coming years.

"Unfortunately, it was necessary for me to have a mastectomy while I was 33 weeks pregnant,” said Erica.

And then because we needed to start chemotherapy as soon as possible, her delivery was brought forward a little bit. And Róise was born at 38 weeks in November 2019."

The draining process of overcoming cancer meant she missed out on key time to bond with her baby.

Having learned that it was not possible to bank her maternity leave, she said that it is an “unfair legislative anomaly”.

"I just feel so strongly about it, in a case of such a serious illness like this where I, and a lot of women like me, don't know if we're actually even going to survive treatment,” said Erica.

"The other reason why it's so important is very often when you've had chemotherapy and a lot of the drugs that we've had to take to kill cancer. It leaves us infertile.

"So it just means that our maternity leave becomes even more important because very often it's the last or potentially the only one you'll ever have.”